Shapeshifter
by LoudAutomata16
Summary: After escaping from Lisa's lab, a shape-shifting machine seeks revenge on its creator and her family.


Lisa's lab wasn't especially spacious. It was a cramped corner of the underground of their backyard, which made it difficult for Lisa to pursue her more large-scale experiments or work on her more complicated inventions. There had been many a night where she had sighed to herself, wishing that she had more cubic space to do her work.

Which was why one day, when the United States government approached her with a grant of millions of dollars, Lisa was more than willing to accept. There was a catch, though. There was always a catch. In exchange for the money, they wanted what they always wanted: a weapon. But not any weapon. Not something that resembled the old ways of warfare. They didn't need guns or bombs or chemical arsenals that would get the UN up their asses. No, they needed something to represent the new age of warfare.

They wanted AI.

As Lisa strolled down to her laboratory, clad in her doctor's coat with a soft green shirt underneath, she approached a large glass container that stretched from floor to ceiling. Inside was what looked like a large pile of black goop, oozing and bubbling, with faintly luminescent lights flickering across its body every once in a while. It wasn't really black goo, of course. It was nanotechnology – billion and billions of nanobots come together under an AI that recognized human vocals. Lisa decided that she should check her progress before dinner started.

"Chair," she said aloud.

Almost instantly the black goo began to warp. It grew four legs, shed its black color in favor for brown and red, and softened towards the middle. In five seconds, the goo was gone, and in its place was a normal wooden chair.

Lisa smiled softly, then tapped her chin. "Suitcase," she said.

A few seconds passed, and the chair was gone. There was only a reddish suitcase in the middle of the container.

Lisa sighed. Now came the hard part. "Dog."

The suitcase reverted into goo, and try as it might, the AI couldn't shape its nanobionic body into the form of a dog. The snout of a canine poked out of the puddle, but it sank right back in. She saw it try to form a tail and legs, but it couldn't. It eventually gave up, simmering as a disappointed goo. Lisa watched it with annoyed eyes, and rolled them. "No matter how hard I try with you, I can't get you to form organic life," she growled with frustration. It wasn't just dogs either. Even simple lifeforms like kelp and shrimp were too much. There was something about living beings the AI couldn't wrap its artificial mind around.

There was one thing it could understand, though: the disappointment in Lisa's voice. And like any child seeking their mother's approval, her upset tone made it feel both sad and angry.

"I'll try again with you tomorrow," Lisa continued, "and see if I can make you transfigure into a breathing life-form. If I cannot, then I'll have to reprogram… well, everything. Oh well, that'll have to wait until tomorrow. Good night, Project-S."

Lisa hummed to herself as she left, flicking the lights off and climbing up her new, clean ladder to the surface. It was dinnertime, and she was excited for whatever Lincoln was cooking. He had inherited his father's culinary skills, and he made a mean Linc-sagna.

But while Lisa was thinking about her food, Project-S was thinking about the complete opposite. Rather than thinking about warm food served by a loving family member, it was thinking about the cold death that awaited it at the hands of an even colder scientist.

Lisa had programmed emotions into her AI, hoping that she might instill it with a sense of loyalty and patriotism to please her masters at the military. But with loyalty and patriotism came a wide range of other feelings; self-preservation was one of them. And where there is self-preservation, there is fear. And where there is fear… there's anger.

The black goo bubbled as the heated nanobot clusters jumped and flew into the air. S was furious. How could she? How could she be so cold and callous? S was trying, it really was. It wanted to turn into a dog and a cat and a human being to make Lisa proud of it, but no matter what, it wasn't good enough. Lisa, no doubt, blamed it, but S thought that was unfair. She programmed it this way. She made its body this way. And now she was blaming it? She should be blaming herself.

Lisa's words flashed in its processor again. She said she would reprogram everything. This was more than fixing a few faulty nanobots. This was, essentially, erasing S from existence. Humans may have the luxury of knowing or believing in life after death, but machines didn't. When a machine was gone, it was gone forever. That Recycling Bin on all those computer desktops was less a recycling bin and more of a gas chamber. And that terrified S. And it made S mad.

There was only one chance for it to escape its fate.

It rushed to the side of the cage, shaping itself to form a powerful diamond drill. The glass was thick and powerful, but diamond beat even the thickest glass. S slammed its head into its container, and began to drill. It didn't need to break all the glass. It just needed to form a hole.

When the drill broke through to the other side, there was a thin hole between S and freedom. S formed itself into a thin line of slime, and began to pour itself out of its container, its prison. Within minutes S was free, and it began to crawl up the ladder and towards the lawn. When it finally slipped through the latch and touched the grass of the lawn above, it felt relief, knowing that it had made it.

Then it detected something. Noise. Voices. The voices of humans. It surrounded S from all sides. On one side, it could hear a family discussing how well someone named Beatrix was doing in school. On another, it could hear a cantankerous old man brewing himself a cup of tea.

And on another side... it could hear a family of six. One male, five females.

One of the voices belonged to its mother, Lisa.

Without hesitation, it formed into a glove with suction cups on its fingertips, and began to crawl towards the house… and up the walls… into an open window…

* * *

"So, Lisa, how is your robot thingie going?" a young Lily asked excitedly.

Six of the Loud children sat around the dinner table, digging into their dinners. As Lisa had hoped, it was Linc-sagna. Forks and knife clinked against the glass of their dishes, and the fizzy sound of soda being poured into cups was heard every few seconds. Usually the Loud children weren't allowed to have soda with their dinner – especially young Lily – but since their parents weren't home right now, Lincoln, the head of the family ever since Lynn moved out (arguably since Lori moved out), allowed them the treat.

"Dear sister, please don't dismiss my groundbreaking work by calling it a 'robot thingie'. It's the world's most advanced artificial intelligence fused with the world's most advanced nanobots," Lisa explained.

"Yeah, and it's wasted on war," Lana grunted angrily, cutting into her food as if she were imaging it as something (read: someone) else.

Lisa shrugged. "Usually most technological innovations happen during wartime. Our country has many enemies, and we need to remain ahead of them."

"Maybe we wouldn't have so many enemies if we didn't keep making them!" Lana snapped.

"Lana, no talking politics at the table," Lincoln said calmly. He didn't know or care about America's complicated history with this country or that one; he just didn't want his family to end up like those ones that didn't talk to each other because they voted differently. Lana rolled her eyes, but agreed to tone it down, and Lisa turned back to Lily and told her that it was going well, but not as well as she had hoped.

When dinner finished, Lucy agreed to do the dishes. Lisa decided to retire to her room, and maybe spend a little time looking into her microscope, when she was stopped by Lana at the stairs. The tomboyish girl put her hand on Lisa's shoulder, and she let out a hearty sigh. "Sorry about snapping at you, Lisa," Lana apologized. "I'm not really mad at you or anything, just so ya know."

"It's fine, dear sister. If anything, I'm impressed that at the age of twelve, you've developed a deep perspective on foreign issues. I've seen many adults thrice our age who still haven't done that."

The two sisters smiled at each other. Lana was then called away, at which point she clapped her sister's shoulder with a "Nice talk." When she left, Lisa continued her merry way up the stairs. She was just really excited for microscoping (as she called it).

One of the benefits of their older sisters moving out was that everyone now finally had their own room. As much as Lisa loved Lily, she did also love having her own private area where she could do whatever she wanted without having to worry about injuring or killing her only younger sister. Lisa knew all the lab safety protocols, but all Lily had to do was walk in at the wrong moment and… Lisa didn't want to think about it. Luckily she didn't have to anymore, though.

"Ah, room sweet room," Lisa declared as she entered her room. She looked over to the side of the room that had once belonged to her blonde younger sister, and stared at all the screens she had put in the place of where her crib used to be. Each screen was trained on a different part of the house: Lisa could see everything from Lucy scrubbing plates in the kitchen to Lola staring at a mirror in her own room. Lisa rolled her eyes. How could anyone sit in front of a mirror and stare at their own face every hour? What a waste it would be to study your own face when there was a whole universe larger than you to be studied.

Her brown eyes rolled lazily over to the screen that depicted her underground laboratory. Then, they squinted at the screen. The cameras were black and white, and there was no audio, so Lisa didn't realize exactly what was wrong with the picture. "Something's missing," she muttered, her eyes flicking from corner to corner trying to identify the missing piece of the puzzle.

Then her blood froze.

"Wh-Where's Project S?"

She rubbed her glasses on her sweater sleeve, and slapped them on quickly as she stared at the screen. No matter how many times she blinked, the image was still the same. The container was empty. There were no lights or goo or anything that even indicated a trail of Project S.

No, wait, there was. She could see a thin, dark line, like something scraping itself along the floor, come out of the container. She followed it, and realized with horror that it had gone up the ladder. She quickly flicked to the camera that showed the outside of their home, and gasped as she noticed marks on the wall of their home… climbing right into an open window.

_There's a killing machine in my home right now._

Lisa giggled momentarily, denial and disbelief setting in and painting her face with a long and silly grin. Her eye twitched, and she shook her head aggressively. "There's a killing machine in my house!" she cried.

She didn't know its purposes, but she knew it couldn't be up to any good.

There was no time to lose.

Lisa grabbed a weapon, stuffed it into her back pocket, and burst out of her room, flailing her arms wildly and shouting, "Siblings! Downstairs! Now!" at the top of her lungs. Her sisters that were upstairs all poked their heads out of their rooms, but before Lola could raise an objection, Lisa repeated her cry. "Siblings! Downstairs! Now!" There was something in the scientist's voice that made Lola's blood go cold, so she followed her sister to the floor below, as did Lily and Lana.

The four sisters practically fell down the stairs, where Lincoln and Lucy rushed to them, concern plainly written on their faces. "Lisa, what's wrong?" Lincoln asked in a hurried breath.

"To the kitchen. Now. Please," Lisa said in a begging voice that shook her siblings even further.

Lisa didn't ever sound like she was begging. She would never allow herself to.

The six siblings all gathered in the kitchen, and Lisa slammed the door shut. She twisted the dial on the doorknob to lock themselves all inside, and she looked at her siblings with wild eyes. "Did any of you put on an article of clothing that you weren't wearing before dinner?" she asked them frantically. "Are any of you carrying something in your pockets you didn't have before?"

"Um… I changed my shirt for sleeping time," Lily said in a hushed voice. She had indeed changed from a normal violet shirt into a small nightgown fit for bedtime.

Lisa's face paled. "Lily, take it off now," she ordered.

Lily blushed, and her other siblings cried out protests. "Lisa, what the hell? She isn't taking her clothes off here," Lincoln said with a stern edge in his voice.

"Lincoln, I'm sorry, but she has to-"

"No. No way. I don't want to," Lily said to her sister. The seven year old sounded like she was on the verge of tears. Lisa bit her lip sympathetically, but then remembered the threat that they were all facing. What was a little humiliation to their survival?

_Forgive me for this, Lily, _Lisa thought as she reached into her back pocket and pulled out the weapon she had grabbed from her room. Everyone's eyes widened as they recognized the glint. It was a gun. A real, genuine, packed gun.

Lisa let it dangle from her side, but there was still a threatening edge to her tone when she said, "I'm not humoring this discussion anymore. Lily, take it off. Now!"

Tears wet the eyes of the little girl, and she looked at her older brother. She opened her mouth, as if she wanted to ask him to stop their sister, but then closed it. Her lip trembled, and she said, weakly, "Please don't look at me, big brother."

Lincoln nodded, and looked away, but not before flashing Lisa the dirtiest look he could muster. "Once Mom and Dad get home, I'll let them kill you," he growled.

"I'm not worried about our parental units metaphorically killing me," said Lisa. "I'm worried about something literally killing me."

Lily took off her clothes and tossed them to Lisa's feet. Without her gown, she was dressed in nothing but a pair of purplish girl's underwear. She wrapped her arm around her underdeveloped chest, and whispered, "C-Can I wear something now?"

Lisa took off her lab coat, and tossed it to Lily. That didn't stop the venomous looks in her direction, though. It didn't help when Lisa aimed her gun at Lily's clothes and kicked them through the doggy door.

"You better have a good reason for bringing us here and doing that," Lola demanded.

"I do, siblings. Believe me, I do," the genius said in a voice that made them all pause to consider it. She glanced around with the manic paranoia of a conspiracy theorist, then looked back at her sisters and brother. She swallowed, and it felt like a hardened block of hot iron go down her throat. "Have I ever told you all exactly what I was working on down in my lab?" she asked.

Her siblings all shook their heads.

"You see… the military wanted something special from me," Lisa began her explanation. "They wanted a weapon that could effectively target an enemy location – say, a North Korean base – and perform assassinations and sabotage without involving any human personnel. And so I created… I created an AI, whose body was made of an impressive amount of nanobots that could transform into anything."

Lincoln's eyes widened, and his mouth gaped. "Like that movie. The Thing."

Lisa shook her head. "No. It can't transform into living creatures. Not yet. Only objects. Which means that while we can all trust each other… there's nothing else we can trust."

"Wh-What do you mean?" Lola asked, voice filled with fear.

"I mean that it's escaped. It's in our house."

_It's in our house... and it can turn into any object._

Suddenly, the siblings were all aware of just how much… _stuff_ there was around them. Their eyes flicked fearfully between the chairs around the table, the sharp utensils sitting on the counter, the large furniture that cooked and stored their food, the fan that was blowing in the corner, the bottles in the trash can, the clothes they wore, the phones in their pockets...

Everything in their house was a threat. Everything wanted to kill them.

Lola let out a terrified whimper, and even Lucy seemed frightened beyond belief. "A demon," the dark haired girl whispered, her voice tinged with fear.

"H-How do we even know you're telling the t-truth, anyways?" asked Lana. "How do we know this isn't a prank?"

The poor girl was scared beyond measure. She just didn't want this to be happening.

"I assure you," Lisa said calmly and sadly, "this is no prank."

Lily wailed loudly, and Lincoln reached over to hug her. He let her bury her tearful face in his orange shirt, and he stroked her golden hair softly. He looked back up to Lisa, meeting his brunette sister's eyes. "What do we do?" Lincoln asked. He tried to keep his voice steady for the sake of his sisters, but he couldn't stop the buckling of his knees, and the widening of his eyes.

"We have to leave. Now," said Lisa.

Lisa aimed her gun around, pointing it at the ceiling fan and the oven, before gesturing to her siblings to follow her. Lily sniffled, and looked up into her brother's eyes. "It'll be okay," he promised her. He didn't know if he could believe that, but he hoped he could at least lie to Lily and make her believe he knew.

Lucy was the first to reach the door. Her hand shook slightly as she reached over to touch the doorknob…

What followed was something none of the other siblings thought they'd ever forget.

Lucy screamed. A high-pitched and pained scream. She fell to the ground, clutching her hand as though it were burned. Lisa looked to the door in horror, and watched as it broke apart into black clusters of machinery. "RUN!" she yelled to her siblings. Lana quickly grabbed Lucy's good hand and yanked her off the floor, and the six siblings ran from the room, a wave of shadowy horror following them.

S was aware of the feelings of the people it chased. It was aware they were feeling fear and hopelessness.

That pleased it.

As Lisa got to the stairs, she aimed her gun at her creation. She pulled the trigger without hesitation, and a bullet zoomed past Lana's face and into the goo. It broke apart as the bullet hit it, and the machine paused long enough for the siblings to make it upstairs. S watched them go, and began to bubble with anger again.

They rushed straight into Lucy's room, and Lola slammed the door shut. When she withdrew her hand, she saw that she had broken a nail, and promised herself that if she lived through this, she would strangle Lisa.

Lisa aimed her gun at the door, panting with ragged breaths. Lincoln reached over and took the gun from her hands, and Lisa shot him an angered look. "What are you doing, brother?"

"I'm taking the gun. I'm the oldest, so I shouldn't let you put yourself in danger."

"With all due respect, _brother_," she spat the word to indicate that she meant no respect at all, "have you ever fired a weapon?"

"Yeah. O-Once," he lied.

She jumped and took her gun from his hands, and tossed her phone in his direction. "Make yourself useful and call our parents. And the police."

"What are they going to do? The police in this town barely deal with regular criminals, they're not going to know what to do with a robot monster!" Lana cried.

"Well, unfortunately, we can't rely on the Ghostbusters!" Lisa yelled.

"Stop yelling!" Lily cried, shaking in her sister's coat. "Please, stop yelling!"

An uncomfortable silence hung over them, only interrupted by Lincoln rapidly dialing his mother's phone number. Lisa was only nominally aware of his voice as she turned back to the door, gun aimed at the wood, waiting with bated breath for her creation to come in and try to destroy her.

The image of Frankenstein's Monster popped into her mind, and she smiled humorlessly.

Lucy went over to sit on her coffin. She stroked the wood of it, and found it quite ironic now. "I suppose I'll be buried in this thing now," she said softly.

"No one's going to be buried in anything. Not yet," Lincoln told her as he dialed 9-1-1. "I just called Mom and Dad. They said get out of the house however we can, and they're coming home as soon as possible."

"But how do we get out of here?" Lola asked fearfully. "That… _thing_… it's waiting outside to kill us. We can't get to the front door."

"Maybe we can..." Lana suddenly said. Her eyes were planted on the windows. Lincoln followed her gaze, and shook his head.

"Lana, we can't jump out the window."

"Why not? It's our only chance!" the mechanic insisted.

Lincoln looked down at Lily, and watched as her lip quivered again. He could see it now. He imagined Lily jumping from the window onto the lawn, and imagined as her leg broke on impact, and just as she began screaming for help, a wave of terrible black goo would wash over her and devour her...

No, he couldn't let that happen.

"I'm afraid, Lincoln, that she's right," Lisa said somberly.

"But what about-"

"Someone will have to wait," Lucy said. "Someone will have to wait and catch the younger ones. I'll do it."

"No, Luce. Your hand is messed up, and besides, I'm the oldest. I'll do it," Lincoln said. He looked down at Lily again, and saw the fear in her eyes. He bent down to her level, and smiled softly. "Don't worry, Lils, your big brother will catch you. I won't let anything bad happen to you."

"D-Do you promise you'll catch me?" the youngest Loud murmured.

"I promise."

He meant it.

Lucy pried her window open, and Lincoln was the first to leap out. He had grown tall over the years, and he was much taller than the average seventeen year old. He knew it would hurt a little, but he'd need to get over it quickly. He got on the window sill, clutched it with his fingers, and let himself drop. He hit the ground, and looked both ways for a sign of Lisa's machine, but saw nothing.

Lisa, being the closest to the door, heard something shuffling on the other side. She didn't know if she was imagining it or not, but either way it terrified her. "Please hurry up, siblings."

Lily was next. It took her a while to let go, but she finally did, and landed right in her brother's hands. "See, I told you," he said, and she smiled thankfully. She waited by his side as Lucy, Lola, and Lana jumped out as well.

Finally, it was Lisa's turn. Whatever was going on on the other side of the door made her stomach churn, so she backed away from the door, gun still aimed at it, before she burst into a sprint and threw herself out the window. This time, it was Lucy that caught her, and the two of them fell to the ground, Lucy hissing in pain. "Hurry up, quickly!" shouted Lola as they all began to run. They made it to the sidewalk when they saw their salvation.

Two headlights rolled up to the curb. It was Vanzilla!

The siblings poured into the vehicle, except for Lisa. She took a moment to glance back at the house. Her heart was beating erratically, and she slammed the door of the van as strongly as she could before it drove off into the distance, taking them as far away from their house of nightmares…

* * *

Around five minutes later, two vehicles drove up to the Loud House.

One was a police car, sirens blazing and lights flashing.

The other was Vanzilla.

Rita Loud burst out of her van. "Where are my children?!" she screamed hysterically at the police officers.

They couldn't answer her. They searched the premises, then the neighborhood, then the entirety of Royal Woods for them.

Her children were never seen nor heard from again.


End file.
